Jim Wallis slips, tells the truth

This is Political Correctness defined: Dissenters are to "stop talking".
In other words: "Shut up," he explained.

Freedom of Religion and the Social Contract

The events of the last week have brought to our attention the freedoms enunciated in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, and how other jurisdictions don't extend the same protections. The Left is now calling upon suppressing freedom of speech that is "offensive" to Muslims. The irony is that they have it exactly backwards. If anyone's freedom of speech/religion deserves to be abridged, it's the Muslims themselves.
The First Amendment says two things about religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

I see these two as a package deal: The Episcopalians agreed not to try to be the official state religion in exchange for the Catholics not having Inquisitions to punish heretics, etc. To participate in religious liberty, your religion has to allow that same liberty to others. If you believe you have the right to use violence against those who disagree with you, then we have the right to use violence to stop you.

Video: Obamacare in one sentence.

H/T CiLH

The Chart Obama Does NOT Want You To See

The MSM will be pointing at a fractional reduction in one measure of "unemployment" that conveniently doesn't count the people who have been out of work so long they no longer qualify for unemployment insurance payments. This is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' chart showing the percentage of people over 16 who have a job:

The Platform: Ramrod Repair

So they put the planks back in:

... by blatantly ignoring the vote and "deeming" the amendment passed.

Folks, we have to have such a landslide that it's beyond the Margin of Fraud, or they'll do the same thing in election offices this November.

The Platform

National Empty Chair Day

Put an empty chair on your front lawn. Decorate it if you wish. And consider leaving it out until election day.

Note to GOP candidates: Have an empty chair on stage with you at every appearance from now on. You don't need to say a word about it. You might just, when referring to the current Administration's policies, allow your eyes to flick to the empty chair for just a moment. Have fun with it.

Saul Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals that ridicule is a very potent weapon, because it can't be refuted. I say it's past time for us to use it against the radicals.

Letters from Democrats: Pre-emptive "Interpretation".

I somehow got on a mailing list and get these from time to time. Apparently, Donna Brazile wants me to think I'm on a first-name basis with her:

The — Don’t watch Paul Ryan’s convention speech tonight. I’ll tell you what he’ll say right here, right now:

He’ll honor the Republican Party, which just adopted Todd Akin’s ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape as part of its official platform. He’ll promise to restore our country’s “traditional values,” like denying same-sex couples the right to enter into marriage. And he’s going to tell a roaring crowd that Mitt Romney will be the next president.

He'll do it knowing this race is a dead heat after bombarding President Obama day after day with secret, special-interest money from billionaire financiers.

Ryan understands how high the stakes are right now, and I know you do too. The most important deadline of this election hits in 48 hours, so let’s condemn Ryan by raising $500,000 before his speech at 10 PM. Can you contribute $5?

If Democrats can’t respond right now, Ryan and Romney will win the key swing states they need to take over the White House and Senate.

Please contribute here: http://dscc.org/stopryan

Thanks,
Donna

Donna,

I know you leftists are used to telling us what people "really meant" after they say something, but you could at least have the decency to let the man actually speak before you start putting words in his mouth.

"Don't Redefine Rape" is Stupid.

One of the most ridiculous of the kneejerk reactions to Todd Akins' comments about rape and abortion has been the hysterical assertion that "Rape is rape!". Even otherwise intelligent people like Paul Ryan are saying it. Well, someone needs to deconstruct this inanity.

(For what it's worth, my own position on abortion manages to make everyone mad at me, but when it comes to government funding, I agree completely with the idea that it's wrong to force people to pay taxes that go to abortions, so the general idea of the law in question makes sense to me.)

I understand why Ryan's saying what he's saying; the hard-core pro-choice crowd has gone full-court press on the notion that in trying to legislate against spending our tax money on abortions other than in the case of rape, the pro-life side has tried to "redefine rape". Well, it sure seems like it's been defined to be a form of rape itself, based on the hysterical comments I keep reading and hearing.

But those who wish to participate in the political process need to be doing so as competent adults, and be willing to set aside childish emotional arguments to discuss the circumstances under which we're willing to use the power of the state, and incarcerate lawbreakers. There are clearly different kinds of "rape". Merriam-Webster has three nouns and a verb listed for the single word "rape", as well as compounds including other words. Let's take the one that seems to fit best:

1 : an act or instance of robbing or despoiling or carrying away a person by force
2 : unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury against the will usually of a female or with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent — compare sexual assault, statutory rape
3 : an outrageous violation

Compare to the Oxford dictionary definition:

verb
[with object]

1 (especially of a man) force (another person) to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will: the woman was raped at knifepoint

[no object]: he pleaded not guilty to burglary with intent to rape

2 spoil or destroy (a place): timber men doubt the government’s ability to ensure the forests are not raped

Notice the difference? The Oxford definition of the sex-crime sense of the unadorned verb "rape" is quite explicit about the element of force, while Merriam-Webster allows two different senses, and goes so far as to point out that the sense where consent cannot legally exist is "statutory rape". Sounds to me like some redefining's already been done.

And of course, with 50 different state (and DC/PR/VI/GU/AS) legislatures, at work, it's unlikely that the language defining "(forcible) rape" and "statutory rape" in any two of them are exactly identical. In recent years, we've added "acquaintence rape" and "date rape", as opposed to "stranger rape", and some states have seen fit to explicitly define a woman under the influence of certain drugs as no longer capable of legally forming consent. Under some legal codes, mentally-handicapped people, regardless of age, are considered incapable of consent. The definition of exactly who should be thus protected is, of course, another element to these laws.

These varying definitions of the capacity to form consent mean that two people who voluntarily engage in a sex act in one state may not be breaking any laws, but the same two people in another state might both be technically guilty of "statutorily raping" each other, if a judge rules they can be tried as adults. Even this depends on whether the legislators in any given state recognized how ridiculous it is to describe consensual acts between teens as them having raped each other.

So we have more than 50 different definitions of "forcible rape" and just as many definitions of "statutory rape" in the US alone. Congress couldn't write a law to restrict Federal funding of abortions to cases of rape while leaving the word undefined for the purposes of the law. Nor could it allow the word to be defined based on the state/territory jurisdiction in which the impregnation occurred, as that would apply non-uniform standards under which two women who became pregnant under identical situations, save for the location of the sexual congress, would be treated differently under the law. Any such law would immediately be challenged because it would pay for certain abortions in some states/territories but not others.

[Click on the title above, or date stamp below, to see the full article.]
If Congress is going to pass a law saying that we taxpayers aren't paying for abortions except in cases of rape, it must "(re)define rape" to do so. And every one of those state/territorial legislatures has defined, redefined, and re-redefined rape countless times over the decades.

It's a legislature's job to (re)define crimes.

Happy Chic-fil-A Appreciation Day

Firewall: Fast and Furious

In the latest Firewall, Bill is furious about Fast and Furious. As always, it's recommended viewing.

National Day of Blogger Silence

June 8, 2012, is the National Day of Blogger Silence. Since I'm silent more than I blog, I'm celebrating it by speaking out about free speech.   Let's start by pointing to an excellent discussion of free speech from Australia, where they don't have a First Amendment to protect them from the sort of shenanigans we're protesting today. This is where they're trying to herd us:

Political Wars: The Koch Brothers Strike Back

We will not be silenced.
We will not be intimidated.
We will not submit.
We will not be enslaved.

We are Breitbartacus.

Real Men Don't Spike the Football

Truth in Advertising: This SHOULD be Obama poster

H/T Kevin